Fading

Hey, do you remember that civil war story from Syria? Not that many people do these days, at least judging by the headlines we see each week in the American media. But it’s not over.. not by a long shot. Just this weekend we saw another sign that Bashar Assad’s strategy of waiting it out [...]

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Reset!

Last week, rumors began to swirl that Russia would sell Bashar al-Assad missile systems that would allow Syria to fight any NATO or US attempt to impose a no-fly zone.  Russia immediately denied it, which of course means that that’s exactly what they planned on doing all along. Time for another reset button? Russia has sent [...]

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Ramirez: Who moved my cheese?

With the lid coming off of what very clearly looks like an attempt to cover up the nature of the attack on our consulate in Benghazi, Obama administration apologists have stepped up their efforts to flood the debate with paraphrases of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s attempt to shut down discussion of the White [...]

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US issues a curious warning on Libya travel.

How well has that Western intervention worked out in Libya? Starting well over a year ago, Western nations all pulled out of Benghazi — the city the intervention was supposed to protect — after it became clear to all but the US that radical Islamist “militias” had seized control of the city and region.  The [...]

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"We're not doing nothing."

Via Greg Hengler, we’re a little late on the “ending the slaughter” part, no? As of last month, the death toll stood at 70,000 and counting. He says we’ve been “active.” What sort of body count would “inactive” have produced? Needless to say, this is sonorous nonsense. We had no “moral obligation” to end the [...]

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Morass.

So much for the “red line” nonsense in a civil war.  When evidence arose that sarin gas and other chemical weapons had been used in Syria, the assumption was that Bashar al-Assad’s forces had deployed their long-held chemical munitions.  That put pressure on the West to intervene in the conflict, especially after Barack Obama’s ad-libbed [...]

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Red lines.

A rebel spokesman, who spoke from a “liberated area” held by the opposition in Damascus, told NBC News there were huge explosions just before 2 a.m. Sunday local time (7 p.m. Saturday ET) in the Qaysoun mountains on the edge of Damascus… “Secondary explosions continued for about four hours. They shook all of Damascus. There [...]

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War

You’re to be forgiven if you’ve opened your browser to good ole’ Hot Gas this morning and think you’ve stepped into a scene from Groundhog Day. Israel bombed Syria? Didn’t we just cover this yesterday? Yes… yes we did. But this is the other bombing that happened overnight. BEIRUT — Israeli warplanes bombed the outskirts [...]

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Questions.

Lots of standard Sunday fare this morning — Mike Rogers and Jane Harman on Syria and the Tsarnaevs, McCain and Durbin on immigration reform — with two noteworthy exceptions. Darrell Issa will appear on CBS to preview the new round of hearings with Benghazi whistleblowers, whose star witnesses have just been revealed. And Jim DeMint [...]

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“We’ve lost track of lots of this stuff.”

Worrisome, but not surprising. Even with good intelligence, how could they possibly know where every last sarin shell is stashed away? The real news here is that Assad keeps moving his weapons around — which, if your memory extends to several months ago (“a long time”!), you’ll recognize as a violation of Obama’s initial “red [...]

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Jordan "alarmed" at Syrian opposition control near its borders.

As Barack Obama prepares to send lethal arms to a Syria opposition that the New York Times reports has no secular armed forces within it, another terrorist group made their plans to get involved explicit.  Hezbollah had been quietly assisting their sponsor, Bashar al-Assad, in reasserting control in areas adjacent to their Lebanon positions.  Last [...]

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Juice?

After the first 100 days of his second term, President Obama just can’t stop talking about the limits of his own power. At a press conference Tuesday morning, he said he wanted a smooth roll out for ObamaCare, but then added, “even if we do everything perfectly, there’ll still be, you know, glitches and bumps.” [...]

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Red line.

I mentioned this in the earlier Syria post but it’s worth repeating in light of WaPo’s bombshell this afternoon. A quote from this weekend’s NYT: “Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of.” What could go wrong? President Obama is preparing to send lethal weaponry to the Syrian opposition and [...]

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“By 'game-changer' I mean that we would have to rethink the range of options that are available to us."

Via Mediaite, to follow up on Ed’s post, here’s The One at this morning’s presser taking seven minutes to remind the world that he’s trying hard not to enforce his “red line.” The big soundbite is his vague pseudo-warning near the end about rethinking the “range of options” available to him, but that’s not the [...]

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The only way to win is not to play.

On this point, the CBS/NY Times poll shows a rare cross-partisan consensus, too, although it dims considerably with people paying closer attention to the conflict in Syria.  Despite all the talk of chemical weapons and red lines, only 24% of Americans overall think the US has a responsibility to take action — up from last [...]

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Seeing red.

Across Syria, rebel-held areas are dotted with Islamic courts staffed by lawyers and clerics, and by fighting brigades led by extremists. Even the Supreme Military Council, the umbrella rebel organization whose formation the West had hoped would sideline radical groups, is stocked with commanders who want to infuse Islamic law into a future Syrian government. [...]

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Yep.

Syria and the Tsarnaevs: It’s an intelligence showcase for the Sunday shows this morning. House Intel Committee members Mike Rogers and Dutch Rupperberger will be on ABC, Senate Intel Committee member Saxby Chambliss will be on CBS, and Homeland Security Committee member Mike McCaul will hit Fox to explain why the FBI missed Tamerlan Tsarnaev [...]

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Doubling down. Sort of.

Via Mediaite. Translation: If Assad stops gassing people right now, maybe U.S. intelligence could be persuaded to rule the previous gassing episodes “inconclusive” and let bygones be bygones. All this is now is a credibility test. Keep using chemical weapons and you’ll force the White House to act, purely in the interest of not losing [...]

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Nerves.

With all the whispers about sarin lately from western intelligence, you’d think Assad might ease off for awhile so as not to put extra pressure on Obama to act at a moment of rising public interest. Nope — if a pro-rebel group is to be believed. On Thursday, the Syrian Support Group (SSG), a U.S.-based [...]

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Red line.

We all knew, or should have known, that it was coming. And now here it is: Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel says the Syrian regime has likely used chemical weapons on a “small scale.” Hagel was speaking to reporters in Abu Dhabi. He says the White House has informed members of Congress that, within the last [...]

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Action?

Not just once, either. Repeatedly. That makes not one but two close U.S. allies whispering that Assad’s gone and done the thing that the leader of the free world said he Must Not Do. It’s intervention time. Israel’s senior military intelligence analyst said Tuesday there was evidence the Syrian government had repeatedly used chemical weapons [...]

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Escalation.

Remember Tuesday’s post about Obama’s “red line” in Syria having been crossed? I’m treating this as circumstantial evidence that it’s true and that the Pentagon and CIA are now huddling over what to do about it. Need more evidence? Hagel apparently had a “long conversation” with Obama at the White House yesterday about Syria, the [...]

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What now?

Something that got lost in the shuffle over the weekend and in yesterday’s chaos, although it shouldn’t have. If O’s serious about his warnings to Assad — “I have made clear that the use of chemical weapons is a game-changer” — then Syria will be back on the news radar soon, in dramatic ways. Over [...]

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Smart power.

For some reason, American politicians in both parties want to see the US intervene to some extent in Syria’s civil war, even after the disastrous intervention in Libya that almost made Mali an al-Qaeda state.  Only a French military intervention prevented that outcome, and that may still only be temporary, but more on that in [...]

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Just ask an Iraqi.

Did we? I must have missed that in the media coverage of the 10th anniversary of the second invasion of Iraq, which provided the beginning of the end of a 12-year war with Saddam Hussein’s regime.  Yesterday was the 10th anniversary of the fall of Hussein’s tyranny, when the dictator fled Baghdad for points unknown [...]

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